A Walk With Google’s ‘Project Tango’

Why might 3D vision be an interesting addition for smartphones? A demonstration of the technology behind Google’s new Project Tango provided some insights.

Remi El-Ouazzane, chief executive of chip maker Movidius, recently showed off a prototype of a Project Tango smartphone equipped with special cameras, sensors and software. Google says the five-inch phone has components that make more than a quarter million measurements every second, updating its position and orientation to create a 3D model of the space and objects around the user.

The Movidius chips help aggregate the information from those components and make sense of it.

During a recent visit, El-Ouazzane picked up the phone and walked into another room, and the phone drew wireframe images of chairs, tables, doors and other objects along the way. Once the information from that walk was recorded, it could be easy for the phone to give a blind person verbal instructions on how to make the same trip without bumping into anything.

Besides navigation, such 3D models can be combined with video and overlaid with information and animation for other purposes.

“Imagine playing hide-and-seek in your house with your favorite game character, or transforming the hallways into a tree-lined path,” Google writes on a Project Tango website. “Imagine competing against a friend for control over territories in your home with your own miniature army, or hiding secret virtual treasures in physical places around the world.”

For techies, Google discloses that the prototype phone runs Android and comes with specifications to help developers exploit position, orientation and depth data in their applications.

“These experimental devices are intended only for the adventurous and are not a final shipping product,” it warns.